CHAPTER 59

“What in the hell is going on here?” Judge Maxa wants to know as soon as we enter her chambers. Guards stand at the ready just outside her door. “Mr. Corvelli, you know better than to attempt an ambush in my courtroom. If this is nothing but an attempt to give the jury a show, I’ll have you in lockup tonight. This is not New York, Counselor, and you sure as hell are not on Broadway.”

“Your Honor,” I say, “several things have come to light during the course of this trial, and only today has everything added up.”

“You have five minutes to do the math, Counselor! Or else I intend to issue you a contempt citation and to revoke your client’s bail!”

I slip my hand inside my suit jacket, remove the envelope, pull out a photograph, and drop it onto Maxa’s desk.

“What is this?” she wants to know before looking at it.

“It’s a photograph of Mr. Maddox and Katie Leffler, Your Honor, taken at a staff picnic for the prosecuting attorney’s office two days before Katie Leffler was murdered.”

“This is the boy Josh’s mother?” she says, lifting the photo off her desk.

“Correct, Your Honor.”

“And you and the boy are accusing Mr. Maddox here of murdering her?”

“Your Honor—” I say.

“No, Mr. Corvelli. Before you continue, I want to know how the hell this relates in any way to the case against your client.”

“Your Honor, the police were operating on a faulty assumption,” I say, “specifically that Trevor Simms was the target of the arson at the resort.”

Still standing behind her desk, Maxa says, “You’re saying that he wasn’t?”

“No, Your Honor. Trevor Simms’s death was incidental. The target of the arson was Josh Leffler.”

“The boy? Why?”

“Because Josh was a witness to his mother’s murder, Your Honor.”

For the first time I glance at Maddox, who is standing slightly behind me, hands clasped behind his back. He looks back at me from behind two mounds of puffy black-and-blue flesh but remains silent.

“Not a word, Mr. Maddox,” Maxa says as though he needed to be reminded. Her eyes dart back to me. “I assume you have evidence of this, Mr. Corvelli.”

“Of course, Your Honor. There was plenty of physical evidence left at the scene.” Again I count off on aching, gnarled fingers. “One, the exterior door to the adjoining room—Josh Leffler’s room—was left wide open. Two, the point of origin was just outside that door rather than on or near the bed. Three, the accelerant trailed under that door—that locked interior door that led to Josh Leffler’s room—for no other discernable reason. Four, the pennies outside Josh Leffler’s room—the boy testified neither he nor his grandmother had any coins; the pennies were used to trap Josh and his grandmother in their own room during the blaze.”

“What?” Maxa says. “How so?”

“It’s done in college dormitories all the time, Your Honor. Students penny other students in their own rooms, stuff coins between the door and the door jamb so that whoever is inside the room cannot get out. I’ve done it myself on occasion.”

“Assuming all this is true, Counselor,” Maxa says, “what evidence points to Mr. Maddox as the perpetrator?”

“Your Honor,” I say, “it should have been clear to me at my client’s initial arraignment. Mr. Maddox requested bail in an amount exactly equal to my retainer, which was in an amount exactly equal to everything my client’s parents had on hand. Mr. Maddox did this to have me taken off the case, figuring I wouldn’t continue if I didn’t get paid. It caused plenty of contention between me and my law partner, but we agreed to take on the bail assignment, and it’s crushed us financially. Mr. Maddox’s backup plan was to have me removed by motion, by pretending he intended to call me as a material witness at trial.”

Maxa looks at Maddox but says nothing. She turns back to me. In a low angry voice, she says, “I hope to hell for your sake, Mr. Corvelli, that that is not all you have.”

“It’s not, Your Honor. Mr. Maddox attempted to block my investigation at every turn. He warned every one of his witnesses not to speak to me. He went as far as to hide Mia Landow and to help Lauren Simms and Gabe Guidry get off the island before my investigator and I could interview them. He turned the entire prosecutor’s office against me. He made certain that the deputy prosecutors assigned to my other cases stuck tough and fought for convictions, mainly against my client Turi Ahina, knowing damn well Turi would wind up in Halawa.”

“Sounds to me as though Mr. Maddox was doing his job, Counselor.” Maxa is growing impatient.

“Let’s fast-forward to the trial, Your Honor. The testimony of Dr. Noonan—the ME playing fast and loose with his words in a murder trial, suggesting the exact size of the blade used on Trevor Simms. Izzy Dufu, assistant chief of resort security, clearly lying about what he observed when he went to the Simms’s honeymoon suite. They were coached, Your Honor, fed everything they needed for Maddox to obtain a conviction, so that he could walk away clean.”

Maxa continues to cut holes through me with her eyes.

“Then, of course, there is Detective Tatupu’s testimony,” I say. “Mr. Maddox tried to feed the defense Corwin Pierce as a suspect. Maddox had Pierce transferred from the OCCC to Halawa so that Pierce could get in my client Turi Ahina’s ear. Then Maddox fed all the information he could about the crime to Corwin Pierce in order to convince me to point to Pierce at trial. Only Mr. Pierce was nowhere near Ko Olina that night and Mr. Maddox knows it. If I went for the bait, I would have assured that Erin Simms was convicted on all counts.”

Maxa shakes her head emphatically. “Mr. Corvelli, you are making a case for a mistrial, something I offered to you days ago. You are insinuating that Mr. Maddox used trickery to obtain this conviction, but you have not provided me one iota of evidence that Mr. Maddox in fact committed this crime!”

“Your Honor, Mr. Maddox’s reasons for leaving California are officially buried, but my investigators have discovered why he’s no longer a prosecutor in the Golden State. He’s had a previous arrest for domestic violence in L.A. County, and it was suggested that he obstructed justice in several cases in which he was involved as a prosecutor.”

“Once again, Mr. Corvelli, I am hearing nothing relating to the Kupulupulu Beach Resort fire. What makes you so damn sure Mr. Maddox here committed this crime?”

“Because, Your Honor,” I say, finally allowing myself a few slow deep breaths, “this past July, three weeks into this case, three weeks into my friendship with Josh Leffler, Mr. Maddox tried to have me killed.”